Real Estate Site Zillow Sued For $60M Over Allegedly False Listing

It's the masterpiece of developer Bruce Makowsky's career, or at least one of them: A four-story, 38,000-square foot custom mansion that goes by the artistic one-word title Billionaire. Inside, there are 12 bedrooms and 21 bathrooms, three kitchens, an expansive home movie theater, two separate wine cellars, a bowling alley with four lanes, and even a "candy room." And it's now the center of a whopping $60 million lawsuit over false information in the home's listing, as per a recent Los Angeles Times story.

Makowsky is suing Zillow because the site carried allegedly false info regarding nonexistent sales of the house, at prices tens of millions of dollars less than its actual asking price. The trouble started in February of this year, when someone with a Chinese IP address hacked into Zillow and added the false info that Billionaire sold for $110 million – $40 million less than its current asking price of $150 million. Over the next several days, other sales for even lower prices that never happened were added to the site, information which Makowsky's lawsuit says did "permanent harm to the property's perception." That's in a field – real estate for the ultra-wealthy – in which perception is everything.

Zillow's most recent response to the suit was to file for its dismissal, and a hearing has been scheduled for June 24th.

Questions of real estate value aside, Billionaire is an extremely impressive property at any price. In addition to the features mentioned above, the house contains 130 works of art and a fleet of automobiles valued at some $30 million all on its own. You can take a look at the property in the YouTube video below from Tri-Blend Media:

Of course, Makowsky is probably right to be vigilant regarding info on the price of his work, since he himself has had to cut its asking price substantially since he first put it up for sale in 2016. Back then, he wanted $250 million for the home (as seen in the above video), and has cut the price twice to get it to its current $150 million price tag.